The main reasons Why Mr .Forbush Stand Against negative view about owl.

When he has finished with one of these rambling essays, Mr. Forbush winds up his study of the species with a short, businesslike paragraph headed “Economic Status.” Here he weighs the bird’s usefulness against its crimes, and it is in these concluding paragraphs, in which the bird is usually subjected to the ordeal of having the contents of its stomach examined, that you see Mr. Forbush the partisan wrestling with Mr. Forbush the scientist. The two are evenly matched, and they struggle manfully. Not all birds are popular in this world, and a number of them have police records. The crow is a corn-patch vandal. The jay is a common thief. The cormorant poses a threat to the salmon fishery. The shrike catches other birds and impales them in a thornbush for future reference. The bobolink knocks the spots out of a rice harvest. The owl presages death. The herring gull annoys commercial fishermen and befouls the decks of yachts at anchor. And so on—a long list of crimes and misdeeds. Edward Howe Forbush, however, during his long life of studying birds, managed to see more good in them than bad, and the dark chapters in the avian book are deeply challenging to him. Of the cruel shrike he says that “though we may deplore his attack on the smaller birds, we can but admire his self-reliance, audacity and courage,” and that “all economic ornithologists who have investigated the food of this species regard it as a useful bird.” Yet the author is scrupulously fair—he ends his defense by quoting Mr. W. L. Dawson, author of “Birds of Ohio,” who finds the shrike’s offenses hard to forgive, and who says he keeps his gun loaded.